Before President Rodrigo Duterte left Thursday for his one-on-one with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, he promised to “invoke” the 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague that resolved some maritime disputes between the two neighbors.

Eight warships, four aircraft and more than a thousand personnel from the US and ten Southeast Asian countries will join maritime drills kicking off Monday, as part of a joint exercise extending into the flashpoint South China Sea.

China has rejected as “unwelcome” the call of the United Kingdom, France and Germany on the South China Sea claimants to respect the arbitration ruling of 2016 and the rules-based framework laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).